Concerned about SiteFinity HTML formattingCancel

Sitefinity has tendancy to strip <div> and putting them at the bottom of the file.

There are also color values that have been converted from hex to rgb. While I have no objection with the change, it should be something that the end user can control. Suggestions are nice, but changes without confirmation are worrisome. Even if the code is not standards compliant there should be a warning. Changing code without permission is frustrating, potentially dangerous, and can cause productivity problems that prevent sites from going live on time.

I just want to clarify. Are you talking about RadEditor and the way it outputs HTML?

Sitefinity in general does not modify user input except when a page is in Edit Mode (design time) it injects some HTML but that doesn’t affect in any way the rendered output when the page is publicly viewed.

If you are referring to RadEditor could please gives some examples? There will be significant improvements in RadEditor in the next release of RadControls.

Yes, the RadEditor is the component in question. Yes, the page is in Edit Mode, but I believe your assumption that HTML rewiring does not affect rendered output is incorrect. Here are three examples that I would like to address:

1) Adding a space between empty div:

1- Open RadEditor

2- Switch to HTML View

3- Select "Indent HTML"

3- Insert <div class="bvl_line"><img width="1" height="1"/></div>

4- click "I'm Done"

5- Open RadEditor Again

6- Switch to HTML View

7- Select "Indent HTML"

8- select "I'm done"

Sitefinity has now added a space between the <img> and the </div>. This rewrite causes a 5px gap on the pages in question. The RadEditor has to be reopened again and the space has to be removed without the help of html indenting. This means every time I open and edit one of these pages I must remember to remove all cr and spacing from this line of html. This issue is currently driving our creative director insane.

2) Striping out of certain style attributes.

Prior to importing our site into sitefinity, there were some essential style attributes on some <a> tags. In particular "text-decoration: none". For some reason, after using the RadEditor these attributes disappeared. The behavior is not reproducible 100% of the time, but I cannot find an explanation why a style attribute that was once there would disappear in such a way.

3) Macintosh Support

As many times as I've told our designers not to use their Macs with Rad Components, they still manage to do so. I have reports that using the RadEditor on a Mac using Firefox completely destroys the layout of any page touched. A look at the HTML reveals that <div>'s have been shifted on the page and placed at the bottom of the page. Albeit not on a Windows box, this is another example of the RadEditor rewriting HTML.

Since most creatives prefer the Mac platform over Windows doesn't it make sense that SiteFinity support it?

While I appreciate your confidence that the Edit Mode does not alter rendered output when the page is publicly viewed, I have shown several examples where it has. My personal opinion is that SiteFinity should not inject or alter any HTML without the user's consent, or there should be an option to turn it off altogether. I don't particularly understand why SiteFinity should be rewiring HTML at all, rendered or non-rendered.

Thank you for reporting this bug. We were able to reproduce it and we logged it in our bug tracking system for further research and fixing. As a temporary solution for the problem our suggestion is to disable the HTML indentation by setting EnableHtmlIndentation="false" in the RadEditor declaration.

In order to reproduce this issue and to provide guidance how to solve it, we need detailed steps-by-step instructions and sample content how to reproduce the issue. What is your RadEditor configuration? Have you set some content change properties such as ConvertToXhtml / ConvertFontToSpan, etc? Which browser are you experiencing this behavior in?

Unfortunately, the provided information is not enough to reproduce the problem. Please, attach sample content and steps to reproduce the issue. It will be best if you can send some screenshots of the observed behavior, of the original content and of the produced content.

Once we are able to reproduce problems 2 and 3 on our end, we will do our best to fix them.

Issue 2 is erratic in behavior and our creative director is too swamped to reproduce it at this time. As soon as his schedule permits or he runs across it in his work on the site, we will post the steps to reproduce.

Issue 3: Macintosh Formatting Errors

1) open page.

2) select edit.

3) select edit on the content placeholder

4) switch to html view

5) select indent html

6) select I'm done

The screen cap labeled "after" shows the content shifting.

The screen cap labeled "divs" shows a side by side comparison between the unmodified and modified content. As you can see there are two extra divs at the end of page. The unmodified content copied from the non-indented output from sitefinity. Formating was applied in BBEdit to clarify the comparison.

The screen cap called "safari" shows the error message that follows after selecting "I'm Done." Incidentally, the rearranged divs also appeared in the rad editor in safari, but I was unable to save the results.

The test was performed in Firefox 2.0.0.5 and 2.0.0.6. Safari was also tried, but it didn't perform very well at all.

Screenshots attached,Thanks a millionLinoP.S Oops could not find a way to attach files.

2. Thank you for your cooperation! Once you are ready post the steps to reproduce the issue and we will do our best to help.3. You can attach the screenshot by using the attachment functionality of the support ticketing system. Please, open a support ticket and send us a screenshot of the issue, since our test with demo site of Sitefinity did not show the problem.

Is it possible to test the http://demo.sitefinity.com/home.aspx and see whether the problem exists there? You can click on the Page link in the admin site and edit some of the pages there. If you are able to reproduce it, just send us steps and screenshots and we will investigate the issue right away.

If the problem exists only in your project, then please provide more information how to reproduce it on our end with a couple of screenshots.

I feel all your pain on this one. For a lot of reasons, I've basically gotten away from using the RadEditor for the bulk of my content creation in favor of just using Dreamweaver to create the HTML and then copying and pasting right into the html view of the editor.

I know this doesn't sound pretty, but the reality is the RadEditor needs a lot of work for it to eclipse the functionality of an html editor like DW. Basic table creation is something that would be nice. Currently there is not good support for this.

Also, basic things like being able to maximize the entire editor window to fit vertically and horizontally on the screen. I don't know why it only shows the screen maximize horizontally. That doesn't do much good when you still have to scroll like crazy when your page is fairly long.

We have switched off table creation in Sitefinity by default. Anyway, you can easily turn it on. Open the EditorToolsFile.xml file located in the ~/Sitefinity/Admin/ControlTemplates/ folder and declare that you want "Insert table" tool available. To add the tool after theFormatStripper tool, add the declaration as shown below:

<tools name="DropdownToolbar" dockable="false">

<tool name="FormatBlock"/>

<tool name="FormatStripper"/>

<tool name="InsertTable" />

</tools>

As for the full screen issue, we will further investigate and fix it for the next release of Sitefinity.

I've been watching this thread with some interest. I have a love/hate thing with browser-based WYSIWYG editors (like RadEditor).

I certainly do not want to be required to write lots of HTML when making edits to my web page. The idea of reproducing DreamWeaver in a browser is good...in theory.

However, we have to remember that browser technology...um...sucks. All of this AJAX magic has elevated everyone's expectations; however, we're still dealing with HTML, CSS, DOM, Javascript, HTTP and a few proprietary browser hooks. The combination of all of this makes for a horrid development platform.

I don't believe it is realistic to expect to do advanced web page layout in a WYSIWYG editor. My opinion is that advanced layout work should be done in templates or ASP.NET controls. The "Page Editor", in my opinion, needs to focus on rapid page building & editing. This means quickly dropping pre-made controls onto pre-made templates. Once the controls are placed, you do a few quick in-line edits and away you go.

Tables were mentioned, so let me use this as an example. Let's assume this table is intended to display a list of products. Rather than encourage someone to create an HTML table in RadEditor, I would like to see a "Product Display" control. This control handles rendering the table. The products are then maintained via a Sitefinity Admin Module.

This is my own opinion though. I would love to hear others' experiences though.

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